Stuff

The weekly YouGov results for the Sunday Times are now up online here. Topline voting intention figures are CON 33%, LAB 40%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 11%.

The survey also included some questions on banking regulation in general, and a couple touching on the ongoing story around the Co-Op bank. Most opinion towards the banks and their regulation remains very negative and very pessimistic. Only 15% think bank regulation is effective, only 18% are confident that enough has been done to prevent a repeat of the banking crash. There is slightly more faith in the Bank of England’s ability to regulate the sector in the future – 33% of people say they trust the BoE a lot or a fair amount to regulate the banks. Bankers themselves continue to have a very poor public image – by 49% to 16% people think they are bad at their jobs, and by 56% to 13% people think they are fundamentally bad people.

Turning to the questions around the Co-op bank, 77% of people think that it should really be necessary for someone to have banking experience to be appointed Chairman of a bank, but most people put the blame for the appointment of Paul Flowers on the Co-op board itself rather than a regulatory failure or political machinations. 67% think George Osborne is correct to order an inquiry into how Flowers was appointed.

Also in today’s Sunday Times is a new Scottish poll by Panelbase. Voting intention in the Independence referendum now stands at YES 38%, NO 47% – wholly in line with Panelbase’s previous polling over the last year, which has been consistently showing a NO lead of around 8 to 10 points since summer 2012. I’ve updated the page showing polls on the Scottish referendum so far here.

When you average things out all these factors do systematically distort YouGov’s cross-breaks and it’s made worse by the fact that there are so few Westminster VI polls in Scotland to compare them to. The latest I know of was done for Lord Ashcroft (f/w 4-8 Oct):

Figures in brackets are from Lord A’s mega-poll in the Spring and show a small swing to Tory from UKIP (who were very much in the news in the Spring but seem to take hold less securely the further north (and higher) you get. More significantly there is a switch to SNP from Labour (and maybe Lib Dem). I suspect this may be due to independence-minded supporters of those two Parties moving over as the referendum has come to dominate political discussion there.

@LASZLO
“As to the jobs and under 25. According to today’s FT graduates now accept lower wages as there are too many of them or too few jobs (too many Eskimos and not enough seals).”

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Yep, it’s the over-populated elite problem the New Scientist was on about. The competition amongst the elite for a limited number of roles mean they have to suck up more resources from others below to compete with each other. Thus the middle gets squeezed, the comfortable middle ground shrinks.

So, without this middle ground, increasingly you are either in the elite, or struggling. Which is not great for strugglers so this prompts more people to try and make the leap to the elite, further over-populating it and intensifying the competition, and encouraging the sucking up of more resources from below by the elite as they try and get an edge on each other…

So apparently Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch have fallen out in a big way over the former’s meetings with Wendi Deng.

Wonder how this could have affected polling during the Blair years, with a huge media empire turning against him?

Speaking of which, have we done any analysis on the effects of Murdoch backing Blair? In 1997 they finally declared for him a month before the election in the world’s least brave move, but is it possible Labour could have lost in 2005 with a more hostile press?

TONY DEAN & ROGER M
” namely, maintenance of the mixed economy with a prices and incomes policy and investment to help maintain full employment” while being 1972 Conservative government policy sounds now like centre ground, and it was the “investment to help maintain full employment” that was debated with Colin as Keynsean and has been supported by the Fed and OECD as the proper alternative to austerity. But I was thinking more of the the Liberal position on constitutional rights, which marked a difference from Labour in their 90’s platforms, and which have been captured by EU legislation in areas such as working rights, spelled out in the Social Charter, and which, like the rest of a social market have become the centre ground of the economic system, where Labour appear to be most at home.

“…Figures in brackets are from Lord A’s mega-poll in the Spring and show a small swing to Tory from UKIP (who were very much in the news in the Spring but seem to take hold less securely the further north (and higher) you get…”

Does this sound right?

HIGH AREAS OF UKIP SUPPORT
* South-East
* East
* London
* Yorkshire & the Humber
* North West

MIDDLING AREAS OF UKIP SUPPORT
* Scotland
* East Midlands
* West Midlands
* South West

A good summary. An additional point worth raising is the additional problem of weighting to previous vote in a “General Election”. Not recognising the problem is what leads Ashcroft to “over-represent” the SNP vote and “under- represent” the LD vote in 2010, in the October poll you mention, by 8%.

In the latest ICM Scottish poll, they have a lengthy commentary on weighting Scottish polls.

They comment “our approach is simply defined in terms of the quality of recall produced for each election. The Holyrood election was more recent, and the recall of voting in it much more closely matches the actual result, compared to the 2010 General Election recall. This made the decision to tie our poll back to the most recent Holyrood election (Constituency vote only) an easy one to make”.

I’m sure that you have a good statistical basis for those categorisations of UKIP support from High to Low.

Given the very different political debate in Scotland, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that the rhetoric of the Better Together parties had moved a number of their more enthusiastic British supporters to consider UKIP as their more natural home.

“…I’m sure that you have a good statistical basis for those categorisations of UKIP support from High to Low…”

Much as I’d like to take the compliment, I can’t. It’s not based on UKIP support, it’s based on the balance of EU8 IPS (International Passenger Survey) data since 2004. The IPS is famously flawed (people rarely accurately characterise their final destination) but it goes back to 75 and ties in with other ONS releases, so it’s my favorite waste of time.

Joshi’s analysis on the BBC article on the Iran deal lends point to the wide importance of the constitutional nature of the UK parliament’s rejection of an armed strike on Syria. Obama’s citing of the process of calling for an all party vote and, so it now seems, behind the scenes discussions with Iranian leadership, has led both to the distancing of this major threat to world peace and nuclear disarmament, but to what is essentially an extension of the constitutional process – that is, accepting the separate sovereignties of disputing parties.
Israel’s and Saudi threats of military intervention essentially reduce them to what they are, second-class powers dependent on excessive supplies of armaments. The conclusion of Joshi’s piece: “for some of America’s allies, it is a troubling sign of things to come. Their priority will be to ensure that this nuclear thaw does not now turn into a regional realignment.” seems speciously wrong: there is every likelihood that both these powers will need to back off from inciting the oppression that marks Israeli behaviour to Palestine, and that Saudi will be unable to continue funding Sunni terrorism, and the prevention of a settlement in Syria.
Watch this space for its further impact in the gradual ending an era of ME terrorism against the West – with Saudi backing.

Any moves, however belated, to effectively rein in the parasites running payday loan companies are good news for the people they entrap and should be celebrated. I just hope that the FCA doesn’t drag its feet given that debts will double if it waits even three months to finally act.

“Oddly enough, in terms of policies, I still agree with the Conservative Government policy of 1972 – namely, maintenance of the mixed economy with a prices and incomes policy and investment to help maintain full employment. That I find myself now to the Left of Ed Miliband is because the political parties have all shifted over to the Right during the past 40 years – I haven’t budged at all!!!!” Tony Dean

@Tony Dean
Agree with much of your analysis above, without necessarily revealing my own position. UK seems to have moved steadily towards the USA in many ways since 1979.

In fairness the ‘Barber boom’ of Heath’s government caused a lot of inflation, and that led to some very long-term problems.

On the other hand, in some ways today’s Conservatives seem to have accepted some more liberal social positions, for example bringing in marriage equality.

We have a paradox in that middle-class lifestyles seem much more widespread than before, but on the other hand globalisation, the Internet and the resulting flat structures at work have eliminated many middle-level jobs.

As in France nostalgia and fear seem to be driving an increase to right-wing parties. If the electorate does vote Labour into power in 2015, then it will be interesting to see if they can meet the hopes and fears of so many different groups. Will the poorer sections of society, mentioned in the past by Jim (The Other One) for example, finally respond, and who will they turn to?

Still, Labour still has to win the euroelections of 2014, and more importantly the GE in 2015, and nothing is quite certain in life.

Ah, that’s a pity: it doesn’t look as if EU8 migration since 2004 is a good indicator of UKIP support (I assume that roughly the same number of elections have been held in each country/region and number of councillors is roughly proportional to amount of support in that country/region). I’ll check number of migrants since 2004 against number of migrants before 2004, see if it’s change rather than absolute value that can be used as an indicator.

“In fairness the ‘Barber boom’ of Heath’s government caused a lot of inflation, and that led to some very long-term problems.”

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It’s not really fair to blame Barber and Heath. True, the Barber boom was inflationary, but it was small beer compared to the big driver of inflation in the Seventies/early Eighties: the big hikes in oil prices.

“We have a paradox in that middle-class lifestyles seem much more widespread than before, but on the other hand globalisation, the Internet and the resulting flat structures at work have eliminated many middle-level jobs.”

————

It doesn’t help when the elite push for globalization, so they can up their pay while trashing jobs and pay and conditions beneath. And they can do this even in relatively protected sectors, where technology/foreign competition apply less, yet we still see the rise of unpaid internships, for example.

Eliminating various public sector jobs also fosters this. It isn’t just external factors, and to a considerable extent, they can allow or encourage external factors, the better to up their pay at the top.

The allowance of mass unemployment also fosters it, since it puts a downward pressure on pay/conditions. So even where a middle class job or function may remain, it, may not have the same middle class pay or status as before.

@ Couper2802
Payday loan cap is another win for EM. He is pretty effective as an opposition leader.
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I think this is an attempt to head off criticism of the Tories vis-à-vis the Co-Op bank & RBS’s restructuring unit.

Stella Creasy & (in Scotland) Kez Dugdale will be celebrating, assuming the cap is a good one & is properly implemented. If it isn’t, I am sure they will keep up the pressure until it is.

Laura Sandys (Con) is standing down in Thanet South in 2015. A seat held (just) by Labour until 2010.

11 Con, 16 Lab, 7 LD and 1 PC have to date announced that they won’t stand again. That’s 4% of Con, 6% of Lab, 12% of LD.

Worth bearing in mind given earlier discussion of incumbency effects, which can also be reversed with loss of an incumbent.

I’d judge that 4 out of the 11 Con seats are marginal or semi-marginal, as are all 7 of the LD seats. The Lab seats technically include several marginals but given any significant swing to Lab they shouldn’t be vulnerable.

There’s a nice Twitter account turned up called electionista not only appears to be getting prompt UK polling (Populus this morning 5 point Lab lead) but also opinion polls all over the world. So know I know Syriza have a narrow poll lead in Greece (for example!).

Of course, if the government caps payday loan rates at 0%, this would be a bit of pickle for the “they should be lower!” strategy, but any government that did that would face the fact that the connection, between (a) payday loan credit drying up and (b) their policy, would be obvious. Capping it at 150% (or whatever number has the right number of zeroes for the ridiculous numbers that these firms charge) means that (a) is latent, and the policy can work i.e. be popular.

Very uncomfortable with the scrutiny (probably rightly) constantly being placed on Labour’s finances by the media but not replicated to the Tories – some very shady character’s and conflict of interests donations gets little air time!

Ashcroft’s mega-poll was Scotland only and UKIP support was actually pretty evenly spread across the eight regions to my surprise. It was taken during March to May and so included the aftermath of Eastleigh and the English counties and is probably mainly a media effect from the coverage.

His October poll was much smaller and did show most of them in Glasgow and West (think Stereotypical Rangers Fan) but as there were only 15 UKIP voters in total maybe there aren’t that many SRFs around (or they don’t answer the phone).

His other recent stuff on the marginals also showed a pretty even spread of VI across (mostly) England. I’m not sure that the IPS helps much[1] because high rates of immigration don’t usually correlate with concern about immigration. It’s fear of immigration that seems to raise support on these issues – you used to see this with the BNP’s scattered successes as well. The areas where UKIP did well enough to gain seats in May tended to be low in immigrants and their worse English region is London.

[1] Does it ever? The only thing more useless than passenger surveys is not having passenger surveys.

Yes! Barber was an apprentice sorcerer with regards to inflation, a mere beginner compared with what followed, and yes there was the oil price hike – and then there was also the IMF pulling the plug on public spending in the UK (Crosland “the party’s over”) starting some of the processes you describe.

What seems incredible now, and perhaps did add to inflation, was that when prices under Heath went up by more than a certain amount then my salary working for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets also automatically rose too. Not sure if that was a national agreement, but think it might have been. Seems a long time ago…

Coming back to the present, and polling, we still seem to have a divergence of opinion on this site between the majority who think the LDs will be wiped out, and others who think that a mixture of concentrating resources locally and maybe a drift back of a few 2010 LDs to them (as Cons tack to the right to head off UKIP) will mean only a small loss.

I may go back and comb back through the LD defence seats to see where the party might be geographically if they lose 30 seats or so.

Re Payday loans: this has been forced on the Tories by LD peers putting down amendments to the Finance Bill. Highly unlikely that Osborne would have instigated this by choice.

Re ‘overpopulated elite’ referring to graduates: given graduates represent 50% of the school leaver population they are hardly an elite; in fact they are the norm.

Yes, competition is forcing graduate wages down, but that has a positive impact on employment. My own (small) company has hired over 100 graduates in the last year and quadrupled in size – without those graduates being willing to accept realistic wages in their first two years we could never have hired them, but our expectation is that each one will double their starting salary by the end of those two years…

Osborne’s move has been called ‘audacious’ (Guardian), but Conservative Home, for e.g., has opined that Osborne appears opportunistic and – worse – in Labour’s wake, making it much harder to criticise Labour’s price-capping policies. If Wonga, why not npower? Fighting on Labour’s turf will make far harder to sound convincing in 2015.

Question is, is price-capping turning into a slow-burn omnishambles? Labour’s lead has widened a bit since the conferences, and Osborne’s big announcement today looks a bit knee-jerk, although months after the fact. Crosby does not seem to have made much difference to Labour’s lead, which begs the question of whither Tory strategy now?

If people perceive that Labour are leading on many issues, would this be translated into increased polling ?

In my opinion, I am not sure this would be the case. Does it really matter that Labour raised the issue of energy prices and payday lending costs ? If the government does enough to respond to such issues, then I would think that the government would get any credit from the public.

My guess is the government wouldn’t, R Huckle: get the credit for following up issues initiated by Labour, that is. If they aim for that, the cry goes up at once: ”At last the government is doing what we told them to do. If you want socially decent and responsible policies, why get them second-hand, etc. etc.?”

The government would have a hard job to answer that line of attack without taking a lead in initiating policies of its own in a similar vein, thus upsetting its own supporters, or ridding itself of those same supporters, which would be suicidal. So they won’t do that, which suggests to me they won’t risk going off in Labour’s direction either, unless they absolutely have to do so. In the present case, people have suggested, they have had their arm twisted by the LDs in the coalition….

Graduates don’t, never have and probably never will make up 50% of the school leaver population in the UK (apart from in Scotland). The percentage for a given cohort, at its height, was 43%, and that includes every higher education qualification, from HNCs right up to PhD. As the ONS found last week, about 38% of the working age population has been to university at some point.

University is a minority sport, and always will be. That’s why the student lobby rarely get anywhere.

“Yes! Barber was an apprentice sorcerer with regards to inflation, a mere beginner compared with what followed, and yes there was the oil price hike – and then there was also the IMF pulling the plug on public spending in the UK (Crosland “the party’s over”) starting some of the processes you describe.
What seems incredible now, and perhaps did add to inflation, was that when prices under Heath went up by more than a certain amount then my salary working for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets also automatically rose too. Not sure if that was a national agreement, but think it might have been. Seems a long time ago…”

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That’s a bit cart-before-the-horse, Alister, if the implication is that Labour outdid Barber in stoking inflation; inflation shot up in Thatcher’s first term too.

There is a direct correlation between the inflation peaks of the period and oil prices. And Labour actually did very well in bringing down inflation from its peak in 1975 of around 25%, to just 8% three years later, before oil shot up in price again.

How did they do this? Well, your second point about wages is an important part of this. You’re right: wages going up in response to inflation can stoke further inflation, as you then have more money chasing goods, helping to drive prices higher.

So Labour bore down on wages, and it worked. Perhaps ironically, this was a monetarist policy, reducing the money supply, but it preserved business, as lower wage costs lower costs on business.

Thatcher’s preferred instruments, things like interest rate rises, increase the pain on business, shedding lots of them and seeing unemployment rocket and didn’t work as well in bringing down inflation. It didn’t help to almost double VAT, also stoking inflation further while hitting business already struggling even harder. It was the quiet abandonment of her policy coupled with a collapse in the oil price (and consequent world boom), that finally saw inflation fall and economic recovery.

They *might* get some credit, but it risks being obscured by confusion or accusations of inconsistency. Very recently Cameron and Osborne have made noises about how extreme capping was … until polling revealed how very popular it is, and the Labour VI solidified as the lead increased.

The bigger problem strategically, moving towards 2015, is that it reduces the space for the Tories to fashion their own message. Any moves at all on price capping between now and then risk the assumption that Labour got it right on that issue and that the Tories are merely following, which is not what you’d want going into an election campaign.

The Joshi piece does not mention the conflict over the Sunni vs Shia gas pipelines passing through Syria, or the licences granted to the Israelis to drill in the Golan Heights.

As I understood it from David Malone’s posts (Golem), the US was being pressured into involvement by the Saudis and the Israelis. It certainly seems that by negotiating with Iran, the US is signalling a distancing from their old allies in the region. However, there may be an advantage for the US in fuelling the chaos in Syria.

‘…Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This (1) keeps them focused locally and it (2) prevents either one from emerging victorious (and thereby posing a yet-greater danger). Western powers should guide enemies to stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their conflict.’ Washington Times

“Coming back to the present, and polling, we still seem to have a divergence of opinion on this site between the majority who think the LDs will be wiped out, and others who think that a mixture of concentrating resources locally and maybe a drift back of a few 2010 LDs to them (as Cons tack to the right to head off UKIP) will mean only a small loss.”

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It is interesting. I don’t think LDs will be wiped out: tactical voting in Lib-Con marginals will help.

The concentration of resources issue I got involved in myself, as you may have noticed. It seemed to have been interpreted as my being unaware of the role activists can play, or that targeting can play, which was something of a misrepresentation.

The role activists can play is limited by the hand they are dealt, and it’s a lot harder when your party has done a load of stuff counter to what their voters were led to believe. Still, at least in Lib/Con marginals, they can still hope to sell the ABT idea regardless, and activists can do rather more on the back of that.

This gets harder to do if it looks like Labour may win handily anyway though, and outside of Lib-Con marginals, we may see activists able to do a whole lot less.

Since I also thought there were none, I looked at the UKIP website and discovered that the 7 individuals listed are all Community Councillors, which is not the same thing at all. (The Community Council I am familiar with serves a village of under 2000 inhabitants, only holds elections if there are more volunteers than places available, has an electorate confined to those present at the CC meeting concerned if a vote is needed, and is rigorously non-party political.)